It is hard to miss the sign outside James Elliott on Essex Road. “COME TO A BUTCHER YOU CAN TRUST”. And just in case you don’t get which recent scandal it might be alluding to, there are press cuttings, too. “HORSEMEAT IS FOUND IN TESCO BURGERS”… “80% HORSE”… “SHERGAR ‘N’ FRIES”.

The customers have plenty of time to peruse them since there is now often a queue outside the door. Still, the hungry omnivore will soon find their attention drawn by the “carnecopia” in the window. There are rib-eye steaks, fresh and crimson, in their metal trays; knobbly little lengths of oxtail; moist tender kidneys. Inside, I found deep brown wild boar paté, handcranked sausages, glistening behind the glass, jar upon jar of condiments, three butchers (Nigel, Mick and Diane) and a retired man named John who has popped in for some veal escalopes.

“I’ve been coming here for years,” he declares. “They do a grand job here. The beef is excellent. But you know the best thing they do? Entertain you! Isn’t that right, Nigel?”

Nigel smiles and the pair of them fall into what seems like an old routine about the relative fortunes of Tottenham and Chelsea — “Is there ever a good time to be a Chelsea supporter, John?” “I’ll have you know we are the holders of the European Cup!” Finally, Nigel cleaves a pair of chops from a pink flitch of veal.

“Fiver, John.”

“You see?” says John, turning to me. “Reasonable too. Very reasonable! The other thing is they always come round and put it in your basket.” He tosses the packet of veal back at Nigel, who slinks out from behind the counter to drop it in John’s shopping basket.

“Where’s my tip, then?” he says with a grin.

It’s enough to make you wonder whether the horsemeat scandal is the best thing that could have happened to the high street. For years, traditional butchery has declined as supermarkets have groomed the public with their morbid reconstitutions. There were 60,000 butchers’ shops in Britain 20 years ago — now there are 3,000.

Still, those few that are left have been reporting huge rises in footfall this past month — some as much as 25 per cent. It is not simply retired gourmets either but mothers with large families to feed and time-poor professionals who once moped their way through the self-service checkouts at their nearest supermarket.

My own local butcher’s — Meat N16 in Stoke Newington — opened in 2011 to the great excitement of local cooks. Roughly 1,000 visit each week, with about 60 per cent of the business at weekends, according to the head butcher, Paul Grout, who once worked with the Roux brothers.

It is a higher class of meat shop, with Pakenham chickens, a ready supply of ox cheek and a notable deli counter. Unusually, it is open plan, with no counter separating the butchers from the customers, Parisian-style. There is also a small wine room at the back (the bottles are organised according to animal) and an events room downstairs, where they show you how to chop up a lamb or crank out sausages. One parent recently booked it for their seven-year-old girl’s birthday party (only in Stoke Newington) and it was apparently a roaring success. They had raw sausages in their party bags.

“If I had a pound for every horse joke, I wouldn’t have to open at all,” says Grout. He says he sympathises with families on low incomes and that supermarkets have their place. “But really, if you’re buying four burgers for a pound, horsemeat is the least of your problems. There’s far worse things in there. Most people understand that it’s not the horsemeat — it’s the fraud. The thing that shocked me the most is the food chain. Those burgers had been through six countries. It’s unbelievable that your food chain should be so long and so unknown.”

Grout is not sure that the general enthusiasm for proper meat will endure. The supermarkets are now buying up British meat so prices are rising — and eventually, he fears he will have to pass that on to his customers. “I’m sure it will blow over and people will go back to supermarkets again. But the British public are not stupid. This has brought home what small independent butchers do — we spend a lot of time finding good products, befriending our suppliers and befriending our customers too. We have a fantastic high street here now. It would be great if people realise how much that can benefit an area.”